Blast from the past

We'll start with the email, even though that's not exactly where the story begins. But stories have a way of doing that: beginning in the middle, or where we think is the middle.

On 6/28/07, Birte Skoruppa wrote:

Hi there,

honestly, I don't remember your name and I don't even know if I ever knew it :-) BUT what I do know is that I promised to send you these puzzle night pics as soon as I get home - and that is going to happen now (plus one pic of me and the girls I travelled with). I hope you're doing fine and having fun, wherever you are!

Cheers.

Birte

The following pic was attached:


Charming, no?

So here's the story: When we were in Lake Tekapo ("we" being me and the Irish gang), I saw a girl trying to construct a Wasgij. Wasgij is a jigsaw puzzle with a twist - the picture you need to reconstruct isn't actually the one on the cover of the box . Rather, the picture on the box serves as a hint. It is usually the picture "in reverse", i.e. the scene depitced as viewed by someone from within, or on the side, or from the back... In short, it's anything but easy.

However, you can only watch so much TV, even in Lake Tekapo (which isn't exactly the most exciting place in NZ). So I decided to help out. And of course, being the true sport that I am, I dragged Damien into the mess with me.

We worked our way through it, sort of plodding along through the afternoon. The evening came, and we weren't even close to finish. We decided to go through with it. We kept going as night fell. People around us were giong to and fro, the TV was on, wars were being fought in the outside world - but we kept on going through it all. At around 11 PM the girl (Ilana - Jewish, from Canada) suddenly decided she had a life, and she needed to get up early tomorrow to catch her bus (as did we, by the way), and just upped and left. Damien looked at me pleadingly, but at that point I think he understood he's dealing with a crazy guy, and just kept working the pieces.

I think we wouldn't have made it, save that by divine intervention we were sent a lovely girl (whose name is, apparently, Birte), who took one look at us, one look at the far-from-finished fiasco, and rolled up her sleeves. Between all our efforts, we managed to nail the bugger by around 1 AM. You can see the final result below:


To be perfectly honest, I didn't even remember she took pictures (of us and of the puzzle). So - even though it's very late - I want to thank Birte (OK, and you too, Daemo) for the help, and even more so for sending me the pictures and reminding me of a happy moment :)